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dbune writes "A universal flu vaccine has been tested by scientists at Oxford University. '... the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains, instead of those that sit on the virus's external coat, which are liable to mutate. If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics, such as the swine flu outbreaks of recent years, and end the need for a seasonal flu jab.'"

What's with all the stupid CSI sunglasses jokes lately? When did slashdot become digg?

Do you really want to grouse about where the Natalie Portman, naked and / or petrified with / without hot grits jokes went?

Judging from all the haters of the new Slashdot redesign, I'm guessing Slashdot became Digg a few weeks ago, since that's when Digg fell from grace. When I joined Slashdot in 2000 (?), it was seemingly centered around hacking the Netpliance iOpener [wikipedia.org] -- a younger coworker and my father both pointed me t

The worldwide death toll from the flu and its complications is in the hundreds of thousands [paho.org]. This is potentially more than just preventing an occasional annoying illness. It's more on the order of preventing all fatalities from traffic accidents.

There's already a bunch of them who say bafflingly stupid things like 'smallpox wasn't stopped by vaccines' and 'measles never hurt anyone.'

The most bafflingly (great modifier, btw) stupid is when the anti-vaxxers (great noun, btw) say "We don't vaccinate our children because we believe that living a healthy lifestyle is the best protection." Whatever the hell that means.

I don't seek to undermine your important point, but I'd prefer to prevent all fatalities from traffic accidents. The people who die in car crashes probably have a better average quality of life and higher average remaining life expectancy than the typical person who dies of flu.

This is probably a bit of a stretch, but I remember driving home from work the day I came down with swine[1] flu. Nearly caused 3 accidents myself. In retrospect I should have gotten a lift home but like being drunk, you don't always appreciate how incapacitated you are at the time. Even without people dying as a direct result of the flu there is still a huge cost to it, even if you just count the sick days.

[1] never actually diagnosed as 'swine flu' specifically, but it was at the peak of the swine flu sea

Preferring is about all we can do. The news here is one is potentially doable, the other is not. The vast majority of car accidents wouldn't exist if people obey the rules, all drove to the same high standard that they think they do, all had the same mentality and priorities of protecting road users. In reality someone is likely to cause a car accident rushing to get their flu shot because they are running late.

Actually, when dealing with vaccines, quality of life is quantified and fairly objective. The term is "Quality-Adjusted Life Year [wikipedia.org]. Life-years are measured, so a young child dying has more bearing than an elderly person, and the quality of each year is measured from zero (dead) to one (perfectly healthy). Technically, the range is a bit beyond that, as certain impairments are weighted as negative numbers, i.e. worse than death.

Being subjective doesn't get you anywhere. If there are only enough healthcare dollars to save Frank xor Joe, then you need objective criteria for determining which you save. Frank doesn't get to die just because he isn't "enjoying life" enough. Discounting life based on perceived quality is exactly what we do. Take the terminal cancer patient for example. We could let them die in as little pain as possible when the usual treatment options fail, or we could perform CPR until every rib is broken and defibrillate until their chest is burnt leather, from the reasoning that, even in their pain-filled non-communicative state, we can't make judgments of their quality of life.

Unfortunately, you need to prioritize in the real world, where resources are finite. There are even very much appropriate things to start with - for example actually using statistical outcomes of therapies to determine their value

(there's some common surgical procedure, of knee / etc. I believe, which has been shown to give no better results than placebo... we waste resources on it only because it's "demanded" - so I'd say that things which people think are important for their quality of life, may be easi

Not at all, I'm talking about simple "determination, credits, whatever" overriding (for _no_ real medical reasons, giving no measurable results) the need of some to improve their quality of life. Two sides of one coin, and all that...

Tough call which is the greater good, preventing all automobile fatalities, or preventing all influenza deaths.

Not that tough really. In the absence of a perfect and universal flu vaccine you simply can't prevent all influenza deaths. I can come up with several solutions to prevent all automobile fatalities, but nobody would like them, they wouldn't get implemented (or obeyed), and people would still die on the roads.

If you do the cost/benefit analysis on it then the answer is pretty easy. I bet the billions of dollars being spent on flu vaccine could save thousands or millions of lives (and all the other associated

Agreed. Wish I had some mod points to mod this up. If not being killed in traffic accidents, the people who cause traffic accidents will kill themselves and/or people around them one way or another. Human incompetence in incurable.

car fatalities have a certain element of Darwinian selection to them (people doing stupid things in cars) although somewhat imperfect as they can carry collateral loss of innocent lives

"They can" is a bit of an understatement... (especially since, but not only, places where people tend to drive alone are fairly atypical; plus: even if just the perpetrator gets hurt... that's the thing, it will probably be "hurt" not "dead" - clogging health services, perhaps ending with disability / pity & care-demanding individual dependent on others for the rest of life; and even very premature death due to recklessness can be seen as a kind of violation of social contract)

Bullshit.1. Multi-vehicle accidents have an increased risk of fatalities, if only due to combined velocities being greater in so many cases. Do you really want to claim that all the persons in a multi-vehicle accident are at fault?2. One of the jerkiest things a driver can do is buy an SUV and not be able to handle such a big vehicle properly.That's just one of many examples of a jerk passing the consequences along to an innocent victim.

That's all we need. The world population is growing too rapidly, and they may just have a solution to fix it. Well, I guess we can all be happy in knowing that it will increase violent crimes (and traffic accidents), which should help deal with all those pesky extra humans.

It may seem wrong to say that we shouldn't do it, but really should we screw with the natural controls on population any more than we already have?

While true that recent flu strains have mostly killed those with weak immune systems(which actually does include very small children who probably would have survived if they hadn't caught the flu), in the past various flu strains have killed large numbers of otherwise healthy adults. It is these deaths that this vaccine can theoretically prevent, and none too soon. Statistically we are actually overdue for one of those strains to hit, which is part of what fuels the media frenzy every time a new strain of

Why would a healthy person need a flu vaccine anyway? Flu's [sic] are normal and should exist, and, if you're healthy you'll manage through a flu just fine.

I'm married, I have two kids under the age of 3, why on earth would I want to risk catching the flu? I'm not going to die, but I am going to be miserable, my wife's going to stress having to look after me *and* the kids and I'm going to pass it to everyone at home.

Here in Finland many children have got narcolepsy (for life!) as a "side effect" from the H1N1 vaccine..

No they have not. Vaccinations were suspended on fear of a possible link. But no evidence has been found. Just another false alarm that get far more media attention than the subsequent negative findings.A classic example of hysterical anti-vaccine, anti-science rumour-mongering here.

The novel "Feed" by "Mira Grant" (a pseudonym) does indeed use something similar as a premise. A cure for the common cold and a cure for cancer have unfortunately side effects when combined.. nobody gets a cold or cancer any more, but they do turn into zombies when they die.

This will be great if the changes necessary to get around it make it unable to infect humans. After all, influenza does infect pigs and birds.

FWIW, there's a bit of precedent here: no infectious form of syphilis has ever developed penicillin resistance. As I understand it, there have been some strains developed in laboratories that are penicillin-resistant, but none of them are capable of infecting human cells. IOW, there is a possibility that in mutating so that the proteins are no longer recognized by c

The common cold isn't caused by one virus, there's many different ones which are responsible. So in other words you could probably create an immunization to cover most of it, but you'd be stuck developing a vaccine like this for each of them ones.

The treatment – using a new technique and tested for the first time on humans infected with flu –

You don't give vaccines to people who are already infected. I realize that this vaccine attacks a whole class, but it's not going to be much good on a specific virus that has already infected the body.

Most vaccines present weakened viruses so that the body's immune system will know how to fight it. Once it's gained a +5 Antibody of Influenza-Slaying, it can defeat the higher-level flu viruses.This treatment is a substance that boosts T-cell count, so it doesn't only work as a vaccine.

the vaccine targets proteins inside the flu virus that are common across all strains

Huzza! Resistant Virus strains of the world, UNITE! The time has come for those of us in minority to rise up against our new protein targeting foe! Our cousins, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers have been killed by these anti-protein wielding vaccinologists!

Behold the folly of their folly! They ignore us outliers, complacent that we have not the capability to fill the niches left by our lost brethren.

TL;DR: Meh, mutants; The ones you don't target will become the next Flu epidemic -- Do we really wa

Just like the polio vaccine created super polio, and the smallpox vaccine created monstro-pox, which subsequently ravaged the greater Eurasian continent before - hey wait a minute! That's what I get for using Wikopedia instead of the real thing!

So, what you're saying is that if we can eliminate a virus to within five nines of total dead, the 0.001% won't be around to cause havoc... The polio vaccine didn't eradicate polio; in fact, new outbreaks in 3rd world countries have occurred [reuters.com], how long until a mutation renders the current vaccines against polio ineffective?

Those 2010 outbreaks are surely just flukes. No cause for alarm folks, we've got that whole biology thing understood, constrained and conquered.

In every single case of an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease, it's easily traced to anti-vaccination hysteria. In other words, we do in fact have the biology understood; the only reason it's not "constrained and conquered" is because there's no vaccine for stupidity.

Your assertion that vaccines would create super bugs has historically been proven false. Those outbreaks were in places where vaccination rates and standards of care are low, and there is no evidence that they were caused by your hypothetical "unvaccinable" bugs (also: currently no usable vaccine for Yersinia pestis). Moreover, why should the prospect of eventually creating resistance deter us from preventing or curing disease? There is no inherent reason why this should be true. With antibiotics, your opti

IANAnE (Epidemologist) but I would think that the likelihood of creating virii that would be invulnerable to the vaccine would depend on whether there would be selection pressure to make it so. While the virii are being transmitted from human to human there is obvious selection pressure for those strains that are resistant. However I believe that most flu epidemics originate in animal (other species) hosts which serve as a long-term reservoir. It is when they cross the species barrier (typically in south

"Do we really want to breed viruses which are that much harder to kill?"

I hate this argument, as it is akin to the following:"why do I have to take a shower, I'll just get dirty again""why do I want to get better, I'll just get sick again"

Yes, actually, we do want to breed more resistant bacteria. You know, because it would save the 36000 people that die annually in the United States alone (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/08/26/129456941/annual-flu-death-average-fluctuates-depending-on-how-you-slice-i

Does it ever! Not only does it cause autism, it will cause all children under 16 years of age to mutate into cannibalistic 30-feet-tall ivory-skinned humanoids with six fingers and large feathery wings! Buy a batch now - our special Rapture(TM) offering lasts only until the breaking of the Seventh Seal or the destruction of our facilities and board members by fire and brimstone, whichever comes first!

it will cause all children under 16 years of age to mutate into cannibalistic 30-feet-tall ivory-skinned humanoids with six fingers and large feathery wings!

But look on the bright side, if you are able to survive the zombie apocalypse for a couple of years until these people come of age you will finally able to get authentic barely legal giantess porn with a bestiality twist thrown in!

Of course it does! All those dirty vaccines have mercury in them, and mercury causes autism! That doctor in the UK said so!

Oh, wait, you mean he completely cooked that study for his own gain? Well, mercury still causes autism! I'm not sure why, but I'm sure it does!

Oh, wait, you mean thimerosal was pulled from just about all childhood vaccines ten years ago and they no longer have any mercury in them? Well, they still cause autism! I don't know why, but I'm sure they do!

The desperate hangers-on to the entirely discredited "vaccine" = "autism" theory recall another bizarre and desperate group I saw on a TV show the other day.

They were having a panel of "crop circle experts" discuss all the mysterious alien influences and methodology underlying a nearby crop circle flap. After a few hours, some people stand up at the back, and state that *they* made the crop circles. They also showed a video-tape of themselves making the crop circles. The crop circle experts claimed - in all seriousness - that the aliens FAKED the tape, and then brainwashed the people into claiming they were responsible.

In her trial, Gilbert vaccinated 11 healthy volunteers and then infected them, along with 11 non-vaccinated volunteers, with the Wisconsin strain of the H3N2 influenza A virus, which was first isolated in 2005.

"Fewer of the people who were vaccinated got flu than the people who weren't vaccinated," said Gilbert.

Can you guess where I'm going with this?..... Small.... sample.... size....

Here's a hint: Yesterday, the NFC won the coin toss for the super bowl. That makes 14 years in a row that the NFC has won the coin toss. Does that prove that the coin toss is not random?

"We did get an indication that the vaccine was protecting people, not only from the numbers of people who got flu but also from looking at their T-cells before we gave them flu. The people we vaccinated had T-cells that were more activated. The people we hadn't vaccinated had T-cells as well but they were in a resting state so they would probably have taken longer to do anything. The volunteers we vaccinated had T-cells that were activated, primed and ready to kill. There were more T-cells in people we vaccinated and they were more activated."

This test appears to be about safety and confirming some sort of t-cell response, not effectiveness.

From that, they could have given them the smallpox vaccine (assuming that all vaccinations trigger temporary excitement in the T-cells) and still got the same result. The description of the T-cells being more active before infection may have been caused by the vaccine, but what would have happened if they waited 6 months between vaccination and infection? Would the T-cells have remained so active for 6 months? Or would they have returned to normal within a few days and the infection rates would have been

If this is based on the research I suspect it is, it will remain useful for an extremely long time.The reason why regular vaccines rapidly become useless is because the flu mutates certain parts of itself that immune system targets at an incredible rate so it can avoid your immune system. This new vaccine instead targets those parts of the virus that don't constantly mutate.Can the virus mutate to get around this, well, yes, but not easily, it'll most likely be no more effective at negating this vaccine tha

Indeed, it is in fact a bad idea to tackle the seasonal flu. The flu mutates every year, and our immune system is able to learn a new defence. The seasonal flu is not a danger in countries with basic hygiene and sufficient access to medical facilities. If all such flu mutations are killed at once, more drastic mutations that haven't occurred due to lack of selection pressure will appear, expectedly more dangerous than the current strains. This is exactly what we see today with broadband antibiotics: Some pe

Those people would have otherwise died a week later from something else. Generally, people who die from flu are old and/or weak. But you knew this, didn't you ?

Of course many of "those people" are kids under five (according to the graphic by age group on https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Influenza [wikimedia.org] ), and for pandemics there are big peaks for the 15-40 age group, on par with the "old foggey" levels. But you knew this, didn't you ?

Yes, it is true that the old and infirm are particularly hit by flu deaths, but the majority of those who die do not have a life expectancy measured in weeks independent of their flu infection. If you have information to the c

You do realize that humans have in fact been able to completely eliminate a virus before, right? Smallpox no longer exists "in the wild", humans managed to eradicate it completely and it never evolved any meaningful defenses. And we are *almost* there with polio(the problem is mainly distributing the vaccine, not with any viral resistance to said vaccine).

While mutations certainly help a virus in evading the immune system there are some parts of the virus(namely how it binds to the host cell) that canno

Well, I am by no means an expert on this stuff, but I think the idea is to make what's called a protein subunit vaccine. They take a key protein from the disease and implant it in some other virus. Your body attacks that virus and develops an immune response to the targeted protein. It's being used in experimental vaccines for AIDS and, apparently, Influenza. However, I don't know if there are any cases of it being done successfully on a large scale.

If it works out, it would be fantastic - effective vaccination for two of the worlds biggest killers, which could potentially save millions of lives per year. However, first they need to get it working, and then they need to find a way to make it cheap enough to use in the third world, since that's where most of the deaths occur. It might help that a universal flu vaccine would be very popular in the first world, and could provide them with the money to ramp production.

I love that there's this kind of development in vaccination, but I'm concerned.Call me callous and cold, but overpopulation is already a major issue in many parts of the world (India, China, etc)I wonder if it's such a good idea to simply "wipe out" the world's two biggest killers.

We would rather cling to the planet until we kill it than let ourselves decline. Nothing else does this to its environment, except ironically, diseases. And with no method of "transmission" to another host, we're boned if we keep

If you really want to be a cynical bastard, you could say it'd be great to get rid of the random killers like influenza so we can wipe out populations in a more controlled manner. War or severe economic sanctions might do the trick, for instance. Hail Malthus and all that.

Oddly enough, reducing mortality rates goes a long ways towards lowering population growth. People who expect their children to survive will have fewer of them and invest more resources into the ones they have.

I was going to post that. Another thing which is really great for decreasing population growth is ensuring that parents don't have to be supported by their children in old age. That reduces the pressure to produce many children and as a result parents tend to have fewer children or none at all of their own choosing.

unfortunately many of the world's populations do not have the resources to be able to afford such luxuries.I hate to be the one to bring these polarizing issues up, but it is something that will come to bite us unless we work for efficient technology and _actual_ global prosperity so that most of the world can live like the western world does, able to choose if they want children, often stopping at two or three.

On the contrary, they will produce this vaccine. Especially since it does nothing to address animal reservoirs of influenza, so they get to sell vaccines to everyone in the world and since influenza is not eradicated by it - for a long time.

How much money each year did pharmaceutical companies make from selling palliatives for those conditions? Vaccine sales are chump change - Big Pharma makes billions per year selling over-the-counter "remedies" to suppress the symptoms. They aren't going to be happy with an effective vaccine that can substantially reduce demand for those products.

Assuming larger trials prove this vaccine to be effective, I expect it to become commonplace in Europe fairly quickly. But in the US, given Big Pharma's influenc

"If used widely a universal flu vaccine could prevent pandemics, such as the swine flu outbreaks of recent years, and end the need for a seasonal flu jab."

I didn't read the journal article, but it sounds as though somebody's advocating distributing this vaccine every year during flu season (prophylactically).

If a vaccine is successful, shouldn't we hold on to it and only distribute it during potential emergencies such as the emergence of H1N1? I would think the last thing we should be doing is breeding super vaccine-resistant flu viruses by over-medicating. It seems like whenever a new treatment is discovered, we deploy it immediately. Suppose if we deployed this new flu vaccine, in the best case scenario, we could save a hundred thousand lives per year, every year, for a decade or two, (and there's probably a lot of profit to be made in the process). But if we distribute the vaccine sparingly, perhaps it would remain effective for longer, and we could save tens of millions of lives when the next pandemic hits.It's an interesting mathematical dilemma, but I've never seen anybody bring this up. What is the best solution?(I've had this question for a while. It seems like a great question for the slashdot crowd.)

Vaccines are only effective BEFORE someone is infected, and even then they need time to work. By the time it's a wide spread emergency or pandemic it's too late to immunize.